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Race 1, Melbourne: My Thoughts

Saturday started off in style with qualifying for the Australian GP. Great session, totally dominated by Vettel who was miles ahead of everyone including his team mate. It was disappointing to see Heidfeld out in Q1 and not much of a surprise that HRT didn’t qualify.

If that wasn’t enough a load of people from twitter & real life (yes they do exist ;)) gathered at a friends house to rewatch qualifying, have some tea & a natter. Lovely to see old and new faces again and to watch the build up that I hadn’t bothered to watch first thing.

Getting up on Sunday morning was a struggle but an interesting race made it all worthwhile. Not the best that there ever has been at Albert Park but great to have F1 back finally after a long winter.

It was interesting to see that DRS didn’t have that much of an effect in the race but it was more than likely cancelled out by the use of KERS by the car in front. It’ll be good to see it used on a long straight in Sepang.

Although Vettel was never challenged, the Red Bull didn’t quite have everything their own way with 4 manufacturers in the top 4 hopefully we are in for a good battle this season!

The cars were surprisingly reliable but not as a surprising as the durability of the tyres – over night it seems that Pirelli have made some decent tyres! I’m convinced they’ve changed them since the pre-season tests…

I felt sorry for the Sauber drivers & Heidfeld. Heidfeld was hit at the first corner by a Toro Rosso which broken the sidepod’s bodywork, ruining aero & showing all the innards of the car. Granted he shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but he did a good job to keep on going! And Perez, who managed to one stop on his debut had it all taken away from him due to a technical infringement on the rear wing of the Sauber.

But best of all Petrov made the most of his afternoon to score his first podium – well done that boy 🙂 He was so cute in the BBC’s forum coverage, bless him, I’m pleased for him. Now if he could please keep it on the black stuff and out of the walls for the rest of the season that would be great!